[W]e are all guilty in some Measure of the same narrow way of Thinking ... when we fancy the Customs, Dresses, and Manners of othe...r Countries are ridiculous and extravagant, if they do not resemble those of our own.LESSATTRIBUTION DETAIL »

At last, on Monday the 16th of May, when I was sitting in Mr. Davies's back-parlour, after having drunk tea with him and Mrs. Davi...es, Johnson unexpectedly came into the shop; and Mr. Davies having perceived him through the glass-door in the room in which we were sitting, advancing towards us,--he announced his aweful approach to me, somewhat in the manner of an actor in the part of Horatio, when he addresses Hamlet on the appearance of his father's ghost, "Look, my Lord, it comes" ... Mr. Davies mentioned my name, and respectfully introduced me to him. I was much agitated; and recollecting his prejudice against the Scotch, of which I had heard much, I said to Davies, "Don't tell where I come from."M"From Scotland," cried Davies roguishly. "Mr. Johnson, (said I) I do indeed come from Scotland, but I cannot help it." I am willing to flatter myself that I meant this as light pleasantry to sooth and conciliate him, and not as an humiliating abasement at the expense of my country.... [W]ith that quickness of wit for which he was so remarkable, he seized the expression "come from Scotland," which I used in the sense of being of that country, and, as if I had said that I had come away from it, or left it, retorted, "That, Sir, I find, is what a very great many of your countrymen cannot help."LESSATTRIBUTION DETAIL »

I have grown so tired of Woman with a capital W, though I suppose it is rankest heresy to say so. I don't want to be Woman at all-...-I have begun to feel that I want to be something like this--WO--Aââ¬â.LESSATTRIBUTION DETAIL »

Although there have been witty big men--Oscar Wilde comes first to mind--wit and humor seem more in the province of the smaller ma...n. Chaplin, Keaton, the Marx Brothers were all small men. We expect a comedian to be small. He may also be fat. W.C. Fields was fat; so was Oliver Hardy. Fat is funny, small is funny. Lou Costello, of Abbot & Costello, was small and fat--a winning comic combination. Tall isn't funny, perhaps owing to its being too imposing, even slightly menacing. Tall and handsome conjoined are especially unfunny. One can always fall back on being the tall and silent type, of whom, in the movies, Gary Cooper was the apotheosis. But if one is small and silent, one is likely merely to be counted shy. Small men are under an obligation to do more talking; perhaps this is why so many of them are always joking.LESSATTRIBUTION DETAIL »

[W]hat I mean by love ... is this. A sympathetic liking--excited by fancy, directed by judgment--and to which is joined also a mos...t sincere desire of the good and happiness of its object.LESSATTRIBUTION DETAIL »

[W]e should talk over the lessons of the day, or lose them in Musick, Chess, or the merriments of our family companions. The heart... thus lightened, our pillows would be soft, and health and long life would attend the happy scene.LESSATTRIBUTION DETAIL »

I am sure no other civilization, not even the Romans, has showed such a vast proportion of ignominious and degraded nudity, and ug...ly, squalid dirty sex. Because no other civilization has driven sex into the underworld, and nudity to the W.C.LESSATTRIBUTION DETAIL »